Carl Rogers; Humanistic Theory

“Give me a therapy which supports an individual throughout, upholds an individual, and understands an individual’s subjective experiences, and I will return to you a healthy person.”

Carl Rogers: Background

• Family

  • Born outside of Chicago, 4th of 6 kids

  • Fundamentalist family (no dancing, cards, movies)

  • Graduated with a BA in History

• Trip to China

  • Learned about different customs and had reduced family influence

• School

  • Went to Seminary school at Columbia

  • Discovered Psychology and transferred to child psych.

• First Job

  • Worked with children and taught at Ohio State

  • Published in Counseling and Psychotherapy with first-ever transcript of a therapy session

  • Later published Client-Centered Therapy

• New Job at Wisconsin

  • Saw competitive grad students conflicted with humanistic issues

    • Published on the harmfulness of competitive learning environments

• Formed Center for the Studies of the Person in California

  • Goal was to achieve world peace through encounter group work and sensitivity training

• President of APA

• Died in 1987

  • Heart failure during hip surgery

Humanistic Psychology

• Emphasizes present experience and the essential worth of the whole person

• Promotes creativity and freedom of choice

• Fosters belief that people can solve their own problems

Self Theory

• Actualizing Tendency

• Organismic Valuing Process (OVP)

Actualizing Tendency

• The inherent need to survive, grow, and enhance the self

• Striving to meet one’s potential

• People strive for greater complexity, independence, and social responsibility

• Motivation in each person is good and healthy

  • NOT aggressive and sexual!

• What helps me grow?

  • Depends on my own unique viewpoint of the world

    • Called phenomenological perspective

Organismic Valuing Process (OVP)

• Inherent subconscious guide that evaluates experience for its growth potential

  • It is our sense of what is good and bad for us

    • Infants choose nutritious food!

• To be self-actualized, we must pay attention to our OVP and avoid negative socialization messages

  • Creative person may lose this if they listen to messages that, say, drawing is a waste of time

Self-Actualization

• The person who follows their OVP is self-actualizing and strives to become a fully functioning person

• Such a person has several characteristics:

  • Openness to experience

  • Existential living

  • Organismic Trusting

  • Experiential freedom

  • Creativity

Openness to Experience

• Some people use defenses to their everyday experiences

  • Don’t intellectualize insults/criticisms

  • Recognize, assess, and respond to them!

• Rather, people should be open to all experiences and accurately perceive them

  • Thought of as having “expanded consciousness”

Existential Living

• Be flexible

• Try to live each moment fully

• Be maximally adaptive!

  • Having “a flowing, changing organization of self and personality.”

Organismic Trusting

• The OVP is accurate!

• Trust your inner experiences at all times

  • Decide what is right for you based on your own intuition, without dependence on outside authorities!

• Dysfunction:

  • When someone loses touch with their inner feelings and values

Experiential Freedom

• You are ALWAYS free to choose how to act/think

  • Even in the most dire of circumstances, some people remain optimistic and form close, supportive social relationships

  • There may be determinism in the world, but one must always focus on what they CAN do in any particular situation

Creativity

• Find new ways of living each moment!

• Don’t get locked into “patterns,” which are often times maladaptive

Distinguishing Between Experience and Awareness

• Experience

  • Everything that is happening at a given time

• Awareness

  • The part of experience that we symbolize, usually in words

• We may erroneously describe our experience, ignore our OVP, and NOT do what is good for us!

The Self

• Ideal and real selves may be in conflict

  • Ideal self may be based on OVP and/or society!

  • Real self is who you are currently

• Listening to OVP (ignoring socialization messages) should lead to congruence!

• “To understand someone fully, we must look at how he/she is treated by others.”

  • When children are made to feel worthy, because there is no discrepancy between selves, they are healthy

  • Conditional love inhibits self-actualization

    • Choosing a major?

The Self: Parent-Child Studies

• Rogers (1986) found that children receiving conditional love had:

  • Increased anxiety

  • Increased hostility towards others

  • Increased somatic complaints

• So what can we do if conditional love has thwarted our self-actualizing process? Or if our real and ideal selves are not close to being uniform?

  • Client-Centered Therapy!

Client Centered Therapy

• The client ultimately knows what is best and how to get it!

• Goals of therapy

  • To bring experience and awareness into congruence

  • To make self-actualization a life goal

• Techniques

Client Centered Therapy - Techniques

• Unconditional Positive Regard

• Congruence

• Empathetic Understanding

Unconditional Positive Regard

• Accept client’s statements and give sincere impression that the client is worthy and valued

• Must be non-directive

  • If directive, you messed up the fundamental process!

Congruence

• Therapist’s behavior MUST match inner experiences

• Be genuine!

  • Focus on whether patient is following OVP

Empathetic Understanding

• Repeat statements to try to fully understand client

• Give words and symbols to feelings that are hard to express —> makes these parts of Self known

  • Especially important in cross-cultural situations

7 Stages of Change

Stage 1 (Pre-Therapy Stages)

• Communicates about externals rather than Self

• Feelings are not recognized or owned

• Fear of close relationships

• No desire for change

Stage 2 (Pre-Therapy Stages)

• Problems are acknowledged, but

  • Seen as external

  • Take no responsibility for them

• Feelings are described in past tense or belonging to others

• Unaware of contradictions between behavior and OVP

Stage 3 (Therapeutic Stages of Change)

• Much talk of Self and past feelings

• Present feelings not accepted

• Choices seen as ineffective

Stage 4 (Therapeutic Stages of Change)

• Feelings acknowledged, but feared and only partly accepted

• Recognizes differences between behaviors and OVP

• Admits responsibility for patterns of behavior

Stage 5 (Therapeutic Stages of Change)

• Feelings expressed in present tense

• Feelings are frightening

• New personal constructs are made

• Desire for “real me,” even if imperfect

Stage 6 (Therapeutic Stages of Change)

• Experience of previous “stuck” feeling

• Rich immediacy of experience and acceptance of it

• Will live “in the moment”

• Subjective experience replaces defined “problems”

Stage 7 (Post Therapy)

• New feelings experienced richly and immediately

• Experience is new and present, not related to past

• Self is the awareness of experiencing

• Constructs are loosely held; ready to be dismissed

• Rich experience of choice

Research

• Q-Sort

  • Given a pile of cards with personality descriptors

• Describe self

• Describe ideal self

  • High positive correlation when mentally healthy

• Therapy (Rogers, 1978):

  • Pre-therapy: -.47

  • Post-therapy: +.59

Criticisms

• Some say that this technique is overly simplistic

  • OVP seems to overlook basic physiological drives (sex, aggression)

    • Underestimates evil in humankind

  • Society DOES tell us some things that ARE good for us

    • E.g., speeding

  • Self-actualization may not be solely beneficial

    • May foster selfishness and narcissism

• Unconditional positive regard, if total, could lead to confusing world

  • People fundamentally disagree with one another

Applications - Politics

• Encounter groups between Catholics and Protestants in Ireland (16 hours!)

• Prejudice changed over course of meeting

  • Working together with open discussion, we may increase our own self-worth and decrease hatred

Applications - Education

• Traditional education is lacking

  • Teacher-centered

  • System is evaluative

• Solutions

  • Education should be based on trust; students should decide what and how to learn

  • No syllabus should be given!

  • No grades